"Murray Leinster - The Gadget Had a Ghost" - читать интересную книгу автора (Leinster Murray)

all. It was absolute proof that he, Thomas Coghlan, had written those
words. But he hadn’t.
He swallowed.
“That’s my handwriting,” he said carefully, “and I have to
suppose that I wrote it. But I have no memory of doing so. I’ll be
much obliged if you’ll tell me what this is all about.”
Duval burst into frantic speech.
“That is what I have come to demand of you, M. Coghlan! I have
been a sane man! I have been a student of the Byzantine empire and
its history! I am an authority upon it! But this— modern English,
written when there was no modern English? Arabic numerals, when
Arabic numerals of that form were unknown? House-numbers when
they did not exist, and the city of Istanbul when there was no city of
that name on Earth? I could not rest! M. Coghlan, I demand of
you—what is the meaning of this?”
Coghlan looked again at the faded brown writing on the parch-
ment. Duval abruptly collapsed, buried his face in his hands. Ghalil
carefully crushed out his cigarette. He waited.
Coghlan stood up with a certain deliberation.
“I think we can do with another drink.”
He gathered up the glasses and left the room, but he did not find
that his mind grew any clearer. He found himself wishing that Duval
and Ghalil had never been born, to bring a puzzle like this into his
life. He hadn’t written that message—but nobody else could have.
And it was written.
It suddenly occurred to him that he had no idea what the message
referred to, or what he should do about it.
He went back into the living-room with the refilled glasses. Duval
still sat with his head in his hands. Ghalil had another cigarette
going, was regarding its ash with an expression of acute discomfort.
Coghlan put down the drinks.
“I don’t see how anyone else could have written that message,”
he observed, “but I don’t remember writing it myself, and I’ve no
idea what it means. Since you brought it, you must have some idea.”
“No,” said Ghalil. “My first question was the only sane one
I can ask. Have you been traveling in the thirteenth century?
I gather that you have not. I even feel that you have no plans
of the sort.”
 “At least no plans,” agreed Coghian, with irony. “I know of
nowhere I am less likely to visit.”
Ghalil waved his cigarette, and the ash fell off.
“As a police officer, there is a mention of someone to be killed;
possibly murdered. That makes it my affair. As a student of
philosophy it is surely my affair! In both police work and in phi-
losophy it is sometimes necessary to assume the absurd, in order to
reason toward the sensible. I would like to do so.”
“By all means!” said Coghlan dryly.
“At the moment, then,” said Ghalil, with a second wave of his
cigarette, “you have as yet no anticipation of any attempt to murder
Mr. Mannard. You have no scar upon your thumb, nor any